It’s no secret podcasts have been on the rise in recent years, but there’s one genre that seems to be gaining ground fastest: true crime.

With 44% of podcast listeners tuning in to the genre in 2018 alone, it appears fear is the emotion that resonates with audiences most, particularly women. (If you’re interested in why, read more…)

So why not harness this trend to make a social impact? It’s a tactic Chris Taylor, CMO of the Heart Foundation implemented for the organisation’s latest campaign.

Launched on 17 February 2019, the campaign first featured across News Corp print publications revealed the serial killer responsible for the death of 51 Australians every day is heart disease.

The four week integrated campaign spanned print, digital and broadcast media channels, capitalising on the true crime story boom to draw both government and public attention to the importance of heart health checks.

“I think that fear gives you a lot of angles. And I do remember when we were going through the creative pitch with a lot of agencies, a lot of the insights were, ‘Look, fear has been done and sometimes fear can be less impactful’,” says Chris.

“And I think that if it’s repeated too often, it can lessen the impact. So what we very cleverly did with News Corp is basically use a very popular genre to deliver a fear that people naturally have an interest in. So it’s fear because you think, ‘Okay, there’s a maniac on the loose.’”

Tune in to this week’s episode of The CMO Show to hear Mark and Chris discuss how this compelling campaign came to fruition, how to use fear-based marketing responsibly and effectively, and petition for government change.

The CMO Show production team

Got an idea for an upcoming episode or want to be a guest on The CMO Show? We’d love to hear from you: cmoshow@filteredmedia.com.au.

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Transcript

Host: Mark Jones

Guest: Chris Taylor

Mark Jones:We hear a lot about purpose driven marketing and causes, but what about if we flip that and we say, “What’s it like to work for a brand that has a purpose? And what is that purpose?” We get caught up in all the details of marketing and communications, and strategies. If you want to simplify it, go back to your purpose. Go back to the cause that gets you up in the morning.

Mark Jones:This is the CMO show and my name is Mark Jones. Thank you so much for joining us again. I am pumped for this episode. Chris Taylor is my guest. He’s the CMO at Heart Foundation. And I just realised I made a pun there, being pumped. I can’t help it. In fact, there’s even a pun to come in this one with a heart tick, you’ll hear that, I’m just telling you that for free.

Mark Jones:Look, it’s a great conversation because I’m really passionate about marketing with passion, or causes, right? Purpose driven organisations. And you can’t get any better than the Heart Foundation. It’s been around for 60 years. If you’re growing up like me in the 80’s and 90’s, the tick and the jump rope for heart thing was everywhere. So they’ve just come back onto the stage. And launched on Sunday, the 17th of February.

Mark Jones:They came out with a brand new campaign, a big launch around Australia’s biggest serial killer. And an interesting example of fear based marketing of all things, and driving awareness of heart disease. So it’s a really interesting topic. And Chris goes into speaking about how the whole campaign came about, his own career and what led to it. And even the inspiration that he got from his wife who is Lisa Ronson, the former CMO at Tourism Australia, who of course is none known very well around the world for the Dundee campaign that she did.

Mark Jones:Look, there’s a lot of elements to this show. He’s got a lot of great insights, very practical insights in how to create and launch a big campaign. So let’s hear what Chris has got to say.

Mark Jones:And it’s interesting to think about your background right out of the gate. You’ve only been in the role for about a year or so. Is that right?

Chris Taylor:Yeah, joined in March last year.

Mark Jones:Right. So, WooliesX, so a digital platform. Just give us a very quick snapshot of how you came to be where you are now.

Chris Taylor:I’ve been at Woolworth’s for about five years in a number of different roles, and was part of the team that set up the WooliesX department. And that heavily focused on a lot of our services products, credit cards, insurance, also online shop, but also was responsible for developing the connected customer experience, connecting customers between rewards, shopping online and in store. Massive organisation, Woolworth’s, and got to work on some amazing things with amazing people.

Chris Taylor:But after five years I was probably looking to apply my experience to an organisation that needed some assistance. And when I say needed some assistance, I was really looking for a well known brand that maybe weren’t known for their marketing sophistication. And the Heart Foundation just ticked a lot of those boxes.

Chris Taylor:Organisation that turns 60 this year, well known brand. Most people know the Heart Foundation, but what they don’t know is what the Heart Foundation does. If I was to ask anyone about the Heart Foundation, they may say, “Oh, the tick,” or, “Jump rope for heart. I did that when I was a kid,” or, “My kids do that.” All those things are great programmes that we’ve been running for in some cases, 30 years. We did retire the tick by the way, but-

Mark Jones:Even though it ticked all your boxes?

Chris Taylor:With the organisation bit, yes.

Mark Jones:Just to pick you up on a pun, yeah.

Chris Taylor:So that as an opportunity was a good one. A well known brand. People don’t know what they do, and if they don’t know what they do, then they’re less likely to put their hand in their pocket and assist.

Mark Jones:Yeah, right. That’s a big organisation to right?

Chris Taylor:The organisation in terms of size is about 300 people. We’ve got offices in every capital city around Australia. So very strong local representation. And in July last year we transitioned after two or three year programme to be moved from nine separate entities to one organisation, which actually is rare for a charity in Australia. Most of them are what’s called a federated structure, which means every state and territory has their own board, CEO and local team.

Chris Taylor:And from a marketing point of view, having that sort of fragmentation doesn’t necessarily equal good consistent customer experience.

Mark Jones:Or even a consistent message and a consistent view of the brand from a customer or stakeholder point of view?

Chris Taylor:Exactly. Inconsistent message, fragmented tactical approach to marketing. And which just meant that we weren’t optimising our efforts. So for me as a marketer, that was a great platform. Well known brand, people don’t know what they do. They needed help to grow their donation revenue. But also, and one of the things that a lot of people don’t understand about the Heart Foundation is they’re a health organisation that educates Australians on heart health, but also educates the medical profession on how to identify and treat heart disease.

Chris Taylor:So a lot of our efforts go to multiple audiences. And the other part of it, which is what you would have seen over the last few days is we’d spend a lot of our efforts advocating for change with government. And so it’s a very complex organisation. I thought that Woolworths with 200,000 people was complex. I think that the Heart Foundation, I probably wasn’t prepared for the complexity of an organisation with 60 year history and 300 people going through such a big transition, the transition that we’ve gone through.

Chris Taylor:So to me, being able to lead that and be a part of it and develop our brand strategy moving forward, now using our data and digital assets in the right way and improving our customer experience is a challenge that is no different from every other brand. And for me that is really why I took the role.

Mark Jones:Look, there’s so many things just in all of that. And I think to sort of view it from a marketing perspective, you’re talking about a legacy brand, but really did have in part, an awareness and education problem. And I think people weren’t sure how to engage with it. When you talk about transition, and I’m interested in that too because where I’m very familiar with the not for profit space, we’ve had other guests on the show and work with clients in that space. That federated model and the complexity, that’s all part of the big changes that are going on in that space. So, it sounds to me like this was actually a leadership opportunity for you as a marketer.

Chris Taylor:It was. And so my role didn’t exist prior to me coming on board. And what the organisation had identified under their new CEO, John Kelly, who had joined a couple of years before I did, was that the organisation needed to separate the fundraising arm and marketing so that we could focus on building the brand as well as driving revenue in conjunction with the other functional area, and that’s the health team.

Chris Taylor:So those three parts of the business are the critical drivers of strategy and that’s a big shift because previously over the 60 years of the organisation, a lot of people did multiples of those things. So each of those efforts were potentially replicated in each state. And you had people who were focusing on fundraising but also doing the marketing.

Mark Jones:Right.

Chris Taylor:And it’s that old tension, I’m a financial services background, it’s the tension between product and marketing. And in this case the tension in a positive way to get out the best results is between the health team who are very clinical and evidence based. where we come in is that we take their messages and take them to market in a way that the man in the street is going to understand them.

Chris Taylor:And when you’re talking about heart disease and cardiovascular disease, that’s not easy. And then the fundraising side of the business, their focus is to develop the programmes that we then take to market to get people to put their hand in their pocket. So that is, fundamentally, a quite a big shift.

Mark Jones:We’ll get to some of the outcomes of your work in a minute, but just I wanted to look at this internal change that you’ve been part of. We talk about an organisational change and really leading, if you like, a marketing vision. And I presume you’ve had lots of interesting conversations with stakeholders about the value of what you provide and perhaps casting a vision for how it could look.

Mark Jones:And I understand from reading some of the reports, you’ve hired a bunch of people across different tactical marketing areas to sort of bulk up this team. So already to me that’s like, you’ve had arguments about budgets, about what we do, about who are the best people to be on the team, how we interface with different departments. I mean that’s a year’s work just there, right?

Chris Taylor:I probably wasn’t prepared for the time that that took. So I joined in March and really my major focus was on organisational structure, developing the optimal marketing structure, putting people that were already there into the marketing team roles, identifying the gaps and hiring those externally.

Chris Taylor:And when I was hiring, I was very focused on high performance marketers. And actually was focused on people without not for profit experience. And I’ve been able to attract some amazing talent from FMCG, from financial services, from retail. And I was very clear when hiring that coming to work for an organisation that is cause related and is very purpose driven, it provides you the sort of opportunity to do amazing brave work that when you’re marketing a mobile phone, maybe so not so much.

Chris Taylor:But I also said, “Look, we’re going to be doing some amazing stuff over the next couple of years and I want you to all think about this as a big step up in your career. And I want you to be able to point and say, I did that.”

Mark Jones:So was it easy to get you know really tailored to people in that context? We talk a lot about purpose driven brands and purpose driven marketing, but I imagine maybe at a career in a personal level that might sync with, broadly speaking, the zeitgeist in the communities. I want to do something that’s meaningful. Was that just an easy win for you?

Chris Taylor:Look, we had a lot of interest in each of our roles. In some roles it’s harder than others, but I think that’s really just more for the demand for those types of skills. So we were able to attract a lot of high degree of experienced talent. And interestingly, everybody who I spoke to about roles all had their own story about why the Heart Foundation. And it’s amazing how everybody does have someone they know impacted by this disease.

Chris Taylor:And so they all feel quite passionate about it. But I think if I look back with an organisation and a brand like ours, passion for the cause can be a double edge sword. And what I mean by that is, people are incredibly invested in the purpose, but often that can sometimes mean that they’re less willing to be flexible and do things differently.

Mark Jones:Yes, I think that’s a very astute observation and one that you see across, broadly speaking, the charity not for profit sector where there’s a lot of well meaning passionate people. But the ability to flex and change, you can kind of be blind a little bit. Yeah, so that’s an interesting thing.

Mark Jones:I’m particularly passionate if we talk about the brand now and sort of moving into the work that you’ve done. I am fascinated by the fact that as marketers, really at our core, we’re storytellers. And there’s a lot of noise about this, but I think this really coupled with creativity is the essence of great marketing, is understanding the narrative of a brand, understanding the narrative of your customers and your donors and all the stakeholders are important too.

Mark Jones:So what’s your perspective on how you’ve understood what perhaps that brand narrative was and then where it needed to go?

Chris Taylor:Look, that’s always on the storytelling generally. It’s interesting because I think that when I was at Woollies, we went through the same thing. Under the marketing team there, they spent a lot of time working through and developing our brand purpose, which then made it a lot easier for people to understand what that narrative is. And when I say people, I’m talking about everybody that works at Woolworth’s. But when they did understand that they can see how that transitions to impacting customers on an everyday basis.

Chris Taylor:And on the back of that, you’ve got some fantastic creative work which started to tell stories. So that’s why picked I Woolworth’s campaign. Develop with M&C Saatchi has been fantastic because it actually gives the brand a warmth that people buy into.

Mark Jones:So is the the insight the warmth, the family, the customer, the Woollies customer, understanding who they are as a people? Was that where you went?

Chris Taylor:Everything about that. But also about being able to impact people on a daily basis, and do a little bit of good for them every day. So with that in mind, coming to an organisation and a brand like the Heart Foundation, it’s actually a lot easier to tell a story. Because as I was saying, everyone’s got a personal story about heart disease.

Chris Taylor:But as soon as you lead the story with an emotional connection and a real personal story, people are invested. And once you’ve got people invested and interested in a story and that can relate to them and their lives and the people that they love, then the rest of it just naturally follows.

Chris Taylor:So in terms of the strategy for us, it’s fairly simple. And Mark Ritson would be pleased to hear me say that it’s a simple strategy. ‘Cause he’s a big believer in that.

Chris Taylor:The first thing is let people know about the cause. And the problem that we had with the Heart Foundation and heart disease is that people had forgotten that heart disease is a problem in Australia. The deaths from heart disease have been declining over the last 20 or so years, but it’s still our number one killer. And as it stands today, 90% of all Australian adults have at least one risk factor for heart disease. Yet our research shows that heart disease is only personally relevant to 50% of them.

Chris Taylor:So you’ve got a lot of complacency out there. You’ve got obesity, you’ve got smoking, high levels of smoking, inactivity, all leading to potential dangerous implications from a heart disease perspective down the track. So, people just weren’t aware that it was a problem anymore.

Mark Jones:Is that because you hadn’t invested in the brand properly? Well not you, but the organisation? Or other macro factors?

Chris Taylor:I would say a lot of contributing factors. And also when it comes to health and not for profit marketing, there’s a lot of noise out there. A lot of different brands, well funded, very good at cutting through on smaller. And I’m not saying less important diseases or issues, but we as an organisation, you’re right, we weren’t doing enough to elevate that. And I think the last major brand campaign we ran was just ended in 2012.

Mark Jones:I was just going to say, I remember it as a primary school kid, revealing my age in the 80’s. I remember jump rope, as you mentioned before. Lot a heart stuff, so decades ago. It was a big deal decades ago. Not so much these days.

Chris Taylor:No. And-

Mark Jones:Before you came, that is.

Chris Taylor:Well, hopefully I can change that, but I think the organisation has recognised that. And that’s really one of the reasons that the transition happened in the organisation, and why my role was created.

Mark Jones:So back to the strategy, you said people are invested. Do you get them know about the cause was the first point?

Chris Taylor:Yeah. So that you elevate the cause as an issue. The second thing is that you initiate a number of solutions or calls to actions for them. And in this case we’ve got a number of programmes to raise awareness, for support and care with those living with heart disease. But also a lot of tools and calculators that we’re developing that people can sort of self help. So if we create strong calls to actions, then we basically establish the Heart Foundation as being part of the solution.

Chris Taylor:Once you do those two things, people and you’ve created trust in the organisation and acknowledge that we’re part of the solution, people are much more likely to put their hand in their pocket and help.

Mark Jones:On the 20th of March, we’re holding The CMO Show live event here at Filtered Media in Sydney, and I’d love you to come along. My guess will be Tamara Howe, she’s the marketing director for Australia, New Zealand at Kellogg company. And we’re going to talk about creativity in marketing, and have we lost it? Or are we too data driven? And I think it’s going to be a good conversation from her perspective.

Mark Jones:Coming from, in fact, back in the … She used to work in milk, and now she’s in cereals. But FMCG is a very fast paced moving environment. So what can you learn from Tamara? So join me for real in person, search for The CMO Show or go to filteredmedia.com.au/events and you can sign up and come along and enjoy a great breakfast networking event.

Mark Jones:What’s your view on a school of thought in creative land? Hard calls to action and soft calls to action. ‘Cause in the storytelling world, if you create a compelling narrative that really kinda just captures your attention, it’s a very implicit call to action ’cause I have to do something, right? I’m driven to search. I’m driven to, what was that brand again? I’m driven to, maybe I should take a different path or talk to a friend or see a doctor, but you understand what I’m saying? ‘Cause I think that’s an interesting part of marketing strategy that maybe we don’t get a lot of attention, on.

Chris Taylor:Yeah. I think that unless there’s a call to action, there’s likely to be a high level of mis-attribution. And I’m always talking to the team, given a lot of my background at Woollies was direct response marketing was, don’t leave a call to action as find out more, because no one ever will. Have a call to action as take the test now or are you at risk? Those are the sorts of things that people can immediately act upon. So what we’ve tried to do, and the hopefully the campaign that we released over the weekend is doing that, and that is rather than say heart disease is a problem, it’s heart disease is a problem and here’s something you can do about it right now.

Mark Jones:And we’ll get to the campaign in a minute. What I like about that it’s an important cause, as you said, the number one killer. So it demands a direct call. It demands a hard call to action in this context. Right?

Mark Jones:So how did you then go from that insight? You put the team together, you’ve had the internal staff presumably argued about budgets. How did you get from there to this campaign that you’ve launched? you’ve got a whole team of people you’ve bought around. It’s a big IMC thing. You’ve got ATL, you’ve got social. I was reading, there’s a whole bunch of executions that you brought to bear around Australia’s biggest serial killer. Just tell us how you got to that place.

Chris Taylor:This is an interesting story. Given were talking about storytelling.

Mark Jones:Right? It’s the story of the story.

Chris Taylor:Yeah.

Mark Jones:Very meta.

Chris Taylor:We went through a process to pitch to find a new creative agency, the organisation. And we were going through that pitch and I caught up with a friend, Damion Eels from News Corp. And he said to me, “I see you doing this pitch, this is something that we can help you with.” And I said, “Well, okay, talk to me about that.” And Damien took this upon himself in a very personal way, that News Corp is the perfect organisation to help a brand like us because they bring the power of the sales side and their reach into all of Australia. But they also have the editorial power.

Chris Taylor:And that was for him a perfect combination to not just raise the awareness of the issue, but talk about it and encourage people to do more, do something about it.

Chris Taylor:And News Corp have have talked to us about the power of the front page, and there’s plenty of examples of where they’ve brought about some amazing positive change in Australia, particularly say, the drought, awareness of the drought. And so they were very interested in seeing how they could assist us to basically deliver the strategy. And so they have, through the course of the last three to four months, we’ve worked very closely with them about briefing them what our needs are.

Chris Taylor:And as an organisation, their news app creative team were the ones that developed the serial killer idea. And that idea was taken … Actually it was first developed at a News Corp a sales conference. I think that was in August. And it was a little bit of time after that to sort of work through the arrange of ideas. But really once we gave it the green light, I think News Corp and us were able to launch it in, I’d say, eight to nine weeks.

Mark Jones:Wow. And I got to say in your experience, having a creative idea come out of the advertising arm of a publisher, is that usual? I’m sort of cocking my head here because normally it’s the creative agencies that deliver that insight and that concept.

Chris Taylor:You’re right. And just to round out that story, the pitch process host Havas won and we were very proud to nominate them as our lead creative agency. So despite the fact that this idea emanated with news, hosts have got a whole platform of great creative ideas that are planned for the rest of the year. So unusual in the way it came about, but I don’t think a traditional creative agency would have been able to execute what we’ve seen over the last 36 hours.

Mark Jones:Are you talking about the scale? So just give … ‘Cause we think about reach, but just give us a quick sense of the touch points here that you’re talking about.

Chris Taylor:If anyone hopefully saw the picked up one of the News Corp Metropolitan Sunday papers on the weekend and there was a full page wrap which talked about Australia’s worst serial killer, and open up for more details inside. You opened up the wrap, and it talked about heart disease and personal stories, and a lot of calls to action. So that as a creative idea was very editorial in its theme.

Chris Taylor:So it wasn’t just creating an ad and placing the ad. It was very much around a teaser campaign that led to the reveal of serial killer being actually heart disease. And I think that only an organisation that has a heavy focus on content development and editorial could really have pulled it off in the way that they did.

Chris Taylor:And to back that up inside each of the papers was a headline on the front page and then a double page spread inside, which talked about the dangers of heart disease.

Chris Taylor:And that’s again, the organisation being personally invested in Australian saving Australian lives. So not very many-

Mark Jones:Was that a directive? I mean the old editor in me wants to understand how that worked. Was a … This is happening, you’ve got to be able to have a PR team who sort of works directly. ‘Cause that’s normally how it happened, right?

Chris Taylor:So, working with News Corp, they have an integration team. And essentially really, it just caught the attention of editors. And is seen as a very worthy cause of supporting. So instead of selling cars, difficult to get editorial interest, we’re saving lives. And so from there it just developed. And the other thing I think is that part of the campaign, it was several parts to it. One is to educate Australians on knowing that heart disease is Australia’s biggest killer, but we’re also using it as a platform to advocate the government to fund heart health checks.

Mark Jones:Yeah. No, I mean it’s an idea that quite clearly scales in lots of directions. I mean you mentioned, so newspapers, were there other channels as well?

Chris Taylor:Digital on all of all of the News Corp digital assets. We’ve also seen, we’re doing a lot of work through social, so Facebook, Instagram, obviously search. And we’re also looking at some TV and radio spots to round out the campaign, which will go over between four to eight weeks.

Mark Jones:Tell me about what it’s like to market fear deliberately?

Chris Taylor:It’s a good question. I think that fear gives you a lot of angles. And I do remember when we were going through the creative pitch with a lot of agencies, a lot of the insights was, look, fear has been done. And sometimes fear can be less impactful. Or, I mean, we’ve seen some fantastic campaigns on drink driving and speeding, and some of those are stop you in your tracks, shocking.

Chris Taylor:I think that, that necessarily, if it’s repeated too often can lessen the impact. So what we very cleverly did with News Corp is basically use a very popular genre to deliver a fear that people naturally have an interest in. So it’s fear because you think, okay, there’s a maniac on the loose.

Mark Jones:Yes.

Chris Taylor:But very quickly, that transitions to a very creative way of positioning a disease.

Mark Jones:Perversely, the maniac within.

Chris Taylor:Well, exactly. So, we were very pleasantly surprised that almost all of the feedback we’ve had has been very positive. Love the idea, creative, love the whole true crime thing. But very few people took an issue with the stance that we’ve taken. And to be honest, we were prepared to have some of those conversations, but we welcome them because we would not apologise for using fear to wake Australians up to a pretty dangerous reality.

Mark Jones:Now before, and you were telling me before, the importance of being brave. I presume there were many aspects of that campaign and the ideas that were brave particularly, possibly being concerned about either not working or any backlash against that idea of marketing fear, right? And then tell me about your wife as well. Right? So how much of an inspiration was she in terms of this big picture thinking and being brave?

Mark Jones:So just for everybody, Lisa Ronson, CMO, Tourism Australia, I think in the marketing community is very, very well known. Right? So many, many people. And I think from a case study point of view, have looked at that. So, yeah. Right? So she’s … Talk about brave, she’s been there.

Chris Taylor:Oh, that’s a good question. So well first of all, my wife lost her dad to heart disease when she was only 10. And I’ve seen the impact that’s had on her.

Mark Jones:That’s a very young age and an important age to lose your father.

Chris Taylor:Exactly. And she will talk about the fact that there’s so many things that she missed out on by him not being around. But she also points to the fact that in those 10 years he was able to teach her some of life’s most valuable lessons, loyalty, being honest, hard work. So I’ve seen firsthand how that can have an impact on people. So there was some inspiration from that, but the second part of it was she herself has launched a pretty brave campaign that’s achieved amazing results. And to quote her, “Fortune favours the brave.”

Mark Jones:It’ll be interesting to see how it evolves and maybe what you learn, and how your organisation continues to change. I wonder, now that you’ve sort of done this, what’s next? It’s not like the campaign is done, but how are you planning to continue this to advocate to continue to build the brand? Because really you’re only at the beginning of this story.

Chris Taylor:We are. So, this being our 60th year, we’ve got a number of campaigns planned. And they’re all sequencing quite well. So the first thing was to have a spark of attention. And that was after being quiet for many years, go out there in a big, bold, strong way, which we’ve just done. That campaign then was timed too, with the federal election in mind, so that we can start having the conversation to get a range of kiosks, essentially, funded as we move forward.

Chris Taylor:One of those is the main ones is to get a medicare item number for heart health checks so that we can prevent more deaths. So that, the federal election obviously coming up in a few months, we’ll continue the momentum to push the message that it’s Australia’s biggest killer, but dying from heart disease is largely preventable. And then we transitioned into a new campaign around the beginning of May, which then picks up again the theme of heart health checks, and takes it down to a very personal level.

Chris Taylor:And then beyond that, there’s some more exciting stuff coming, working with corporates.

Mark Jones:Watch this space hey?

Mark Jones:So raise awareness, then make it personal once you’ve got people’s attention, and then move from there. Tell me about the role, just briefly before we wrap this up, the role of marketing in government lobbying. And I think that’s really interesting in your context. In fact, I’ve had this conversation many times with other people in your roles in this sector because you have an internal tension between those who are working and lobbying directly to government and government departments, right?

Mark Jones:And then the marketers, quote unquote, who are maybe more predominantly talking to the community and the stakeholders and the sponsors and so forth.

Chris Taylor:I think they work together and that there is a tension that needs to be considered. But I think that when I talk about being a brave campaign, I have to call out my CEO who has taken that upon his own shoulders because he is the one that obviously has a lot of direct communication with government. But to be honest, I think that a campaign that everyone’s talking about helps. It helps have conversations. It helps open the door, it puts things back on the agenda.

Chris Taylor:And I think that with something like this with 51 people dying every day and a lot of those deaths unnecessary, it gives the positive impetus to open doors. So I think they work hand in hand. There’s a lot of subtleties that in terms of longstanding relationships that need to be considered. But at the end of the day, I think we believe in what we’re doing. And that’s where News Corp came in. They’re very good at and helping to drive that large scale message. So I think that the whole organisation is very supportive of the approach that we’ve taken.

Mark Jones:And I would just say, as an observer, you’ve mentioned the 51 deaths a day. I think clearly, that’s the key message. When you have a very clear single message and a very clear story, that presumably helps with the cut through, right? I mean it’s a very simple idea.

Chris Taylor:It does. And I’ve got a lot of feedback that the serial killer, 51 deaths a day is very clear and single minded. And while we do as an organisation have a number of calls to action, the one that has resonated very strongly is to go online and do our heart age calculator.

Chris Taylor:So it’s just a simple two minute test to basically determine, there’s a number of inputs, but it’ll tell you whether you’re at high risk of heart disease or not. And we’ve had so far in 36 hours, 130,000 people to go and complete that test. Which actually that sort of feedback and those sort of results does help the conversations, in terms of the advocacy ask. Because it is something that people are taking a very strong interest in.

Mark Jones:Yeah. And in terms of measurement, I’m sure that’s one of the key things you’re looking at it, right?

Chris Taylor:That and a range of other things, yeah.

Mark Jones:Yeah, okay. Well look, I’m on the other side of 40, and I think I’m inspired to go and join the hundreds of thousands of people presumably who will ultimately go and do that test. So, well done.

Chris Taylor:Thank you.

Mark Jones:Yeah. And look, thanks for being our guest on the show. I really appreciate your insights and it’s great to hear this narrative arc, right? About how you’ve taken this experience and then channelled through into the purpose, a not for profit world. I think it’s a thing that many people aspire to. And to be able to take the best of your corporate experience and put that to play in this way, I think is really … It’s inspiring and great to hear, so thanks for sharing your story.

Chris Taylor:Yeah, no problem. And look, I’ll just say it’s actually a lot of fun to do it. It’s a lot of hard work. And my team back at the Heart Foundation have worked incredibly hard to do this in a short space of time. But I think most of us will look back and think, that’s what we come to work for. That is actually the best part of being in marketing, being able to influence a lot of people, but also have a lot of people talk about what you do. So to me that’s just the fun of it.

Mark Jones:Excellent. Well thank you. I hope to see you again.

Chris Taylor:Thanks, Mark.

Mark Jones:Chris Taylor, there he is. I’ve got to say, this was one of those episodes where I was writing notes myself. Writing down a few things that I didn’t want to forget. And in particular, I love the idea of leading with emotion. One of the things actually I talk about in a keynote series that I deliver called Beliefonomics. We talk about how you need to have both the hearts and minds engaged your emotion, and the logic aspect of our brain have got to be involved when you’re telling a story.

Mark Jones:And he really talked a lot about that, about how you’ve got to know what’s the emotional cause that’s going to connect with your audience. And I think that’s a really, really important thing because really it’s our emotions and the belief systems that we carry that engage us in a particular story. So a great example here of being able to take that idea and execute really, really well.

Mark Jones:So I hope you’ve got a lot out of it. If you can think of a colleague or a friend that might get a lot out of this and the ideas that we’re sharing, look, ’cause really our passionate at The CMO Show is to share these ideas. We’re really believe in lifting the whole community, sharing knowledge and getting better as professional marketers. So do let your friends and family know all about it.

Mark Jones:So that’s it for me, this episode. It’s been great to have you and I’ll see you on the flip side.